The big milestone for the Potato-Friendly Salad Bar Challenge was the USDA approval of $900,000 in the U.S. Potato Board’s (USPB) FY 2016 budget to fund actual salad bars for this new program. This initiative was unveiled by USPB president and CEO Blair Richardson at Potato Expo 2015 in Orlando, Fla., earlier this year. The salad bar challenge is a U.S. potato industry initiative to connect more kids to healthy potato meals in school lunch programs across the nation. Shippers, state organizations, individual growers and farm organizations have put their support behind this industry challenge to add 3,000 salad bars to schools in five years. As of July 1, the program’s official launch date, 20 percent of the first year’s objective had already been met. To begin making an immediate impact, the USPB would like to have as many salad bars as possible ordered and placed at the beginning of the new school year, August 2015.
The USPB is glad to be working with “Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools,” a partnership founded by the Chef Ann Foundation, National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, United Fresh Produce Association Foundation and Whole Foods Market, in support of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” initiative. The USPB and these organizations are working toward the same goals of providing fruits and vegetables to a generation of students who love fresh food. This is a unique opportunity for the potato industry to connect with these young consumers and show how innovative, versatile and healthy potatoes can be.
“This Potato-Friendly Salad Bar initiative is a new industry program, but it’s also part of a bigger picture at the USPB, as we enter into the school nutrition and foodservice area with a stronger marketing plan,” explains Meredith Myers, USPB global consumer marketing manager. “The USPB recently hired an agency with extensive experience in school foodservice marketing to help reach this new, young target consumer.”
The marketing objective is straightforward: to increase healthy potato offerings at schools. Ultimately, this new direction will be about igniting interest and creating excitement with the U.S. potato industry in providing healthy meals for kids. The USPB kicked off this new program at the School Nutrition Association’s 69th Annual National Conference last month in Salt Lake City.
School children in grades K through 12 eat over 5 billion school lunches each year. One more serving of potatoes equates to 3.75 million hundredweight.
In April, the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee (CPAC) donated one salad bar to the Mapleton School District, and the USPB followed with a match of two salad bars. This Denver area public school district has 15 schools serving 8,000 students. CPAC has challenged its members to increase total salad bar donations to 100 in 2015. Some states will be funding large numbers of salad bar donations with specialty block grants from their state departments of agriculture.
“We will continue to build our involvement with the influencers in this community, much like we have done in other marketing programs,” Myers says. “We will be developing new recipes and photography for this audience. These will be placed in a comprehensive toolkit for online and print availability. This toolkit is essential to making it easy and straightforward for school nutrition directors to implement. We know there is no ‘one-size-fits-all,’ and we want to make sure our offerings are versatile and can meet a wide range of school needs to make their jobs easier.”
The U.S. potato industry has a big opportunity in helping to market the school lunch program. Already, USPB staff has completed primary research to build this program. Examples of this work include multiple one-on-one interviews with school nutrition directors and consultants, attendance at the School Nutrition Association annual meeting this past March in Oregon, the Culinary Institute of America’s Healthy Flavors Healthy kids Summit in May, and the Colorado School Nutrition Association 2015 summer conference in June. As with all USPB marketing programs, measuring impact is critical. School menu tracking and ongoing engagement with school districts will be a key component of assessing the program’s effectiveness. Insights and results will be shared with Board members as data is available.
Let’s get potato-friendly salad bars and potato nutrition materials into thousands of schools nationwide. Remember, students in grades K through 12 eat over 5 billion school lunches each year, so one more serving of potatoes equates to 3.75 hundredweight. Join the challenge today and support healthy eating, healthy learning and the next generation of potato lovers.
For every salad bar donated, the USPB plans to match the donation in the school district you choose. Sign up today and join the challenge or email questions to saladbars@uspotatoes.com.
David Fairbourn is Manager, Industry Communications & Policy, at the United States Potato Board in Denver. The mission of the USPB is to increase demand for potatoes and potato products through an integrated promotion program, thereby providing U.S. producers with expanding markets for their production. David can be contacted at 303-369-7783 or david.fairbourn@uspotatoes.com. For complete information about the programs, ROI results, resources and tools available to all members of the industry through the USPB, please visit www.uspotatoes.com. The United States Potato Board—Maximizing Return on Grower Investment.